Architectural and Ground Rewriting: Design for Corso Matteotti and Palazzo Mascheroni at Meda

The historic cores of some Italian small towns of rural formation, although morphologically qualified and belonging to dynamic economic realities, suffer from abandonment and decay which, over time, provoke the decline of economic activities, loss of vitality and, finally, urban blight. Taking Meda historic centre (Lombardy) as a case study, the research investigated the urban form potential to define a multi-scale design-led strategy to recover and reshape public space, historic buildings and courtyards as a system and driver for attracting commercial and cultural activities, supporting pedestrianisation and shaping places of social interaction. The design strategy in historic urban and architectural space entailed reordering and coexistence of multiple meanings and temporalities, in which enhancement of the spatialised time intertwined with narrative simultaneity introduced by the design. The reading of overlapping urban structures and tissues questioned the boundary of the historic centre and its supposed homogeneity while revealing a Morphologic Semantic Unit defined by the persistence of settlement principles and the Iconism of Urban Form. To reactivate this unit, the strategy defined the heads of the regenerative structure, a “staccato sequence” of space-places of encounters and the extension of public space as a dynamic and fluid element into semi-public courtyards, rewriting respectively dilapidated buildings and urban ground. By appropriating and aggregating spatial segments of different temporalities into novel spatial figures and uses, rewriting procedures disclosed latent orders and typological variations which enhanced both the historic and new writing, generating depth, narration and meaning.